O'Neill's 'Today is Perfect' road trip comes to a spectacular end with a party and exhibition at 71a on Thursday August 28.

O'Neill's 'Today is Perfect' road trip comes to a spectacular end with a party and exhibition at 71a on Thursday August 28.

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The O’Neill ‘Today is Perfect’ road trip bus will be making its final stop in Shoreditch, East London this week after an action packed summer travelling through some of the UK’s best surf beaches, Somersault and Leopallooza festivals and surf shops up and down the country.

To celebrate the end of an incredible journey, join us for the closing party at 71a Gallery, Leonard Street on Thursday August 28 from 6pm.

Thursday kicks off with SaRench’s Memoirs Of A Road Trip exhibition from 11am at 71s Gallery, followed by the closing party kicking off at 6pm.

The party brings to an end a great summer of live music with the High Tide acoustic sessions, surf film screenings and a host of surf related activities, as well as the O’Neill takeover of Surfdome’s Old Street Station pop-up shop.

O’Neill x Surfdome pop-up shop takeover

Head down to the Old Street Station shops underneath Silicon Roundabout this week for live painting and more High Tide acoustic sessions as O’Neill drop in to takeover the last day’s of Surfdome’s Old Street Station pop-up shop.

On Tuesday August 26, illustrator Suzi Kemp will be bringing her bright tropical colours to the storefront, followed by a live set from Glasgow’s best kept secret Aaron Fyfe live at 6pm.

Wednesday August 27 sees Falmouth folksters Lily & Meg and the relentless Rob Lynch playing live from 6pm.

Live painting with Suzi Kemp

Suzi adds finishing touches to her piece.

Huck caught up with London-based illustrator Suzi Kemp as she applied some tropical flavour to the Surfdome pop-up storefront.

How did you settle on the idea for this piece?
I thought I would come up with a patchwork of different spaces, so I masking-taped it out and filled each space with a different pattern to represent each idea. So we’ve got the island section, the sunshine section and there’s the wave pattern at the end.

You’ve done a whole series on wooden boards and here you’re painting on glass. What attracts you to different mediums?
You have to work with the limitations of the surface or the space. I enjoy it because you’re not slumped over a computer so it’s actually quite relaxing, being able to physically draw or paint but getting the stroke right can take a bit of perfecting.

Your early pieces were super DIY. Do you still go for that vibe?
I aim to do work that looks good to me, rather than trying to make things look commercially polished, I suppose. When I started out I didn’t have Photoshop so I did everything in Word. I would make something, print it out in black and white, and then cut it out and stuff like that. That lo-fi feel has carried through, even though I now work with proper design software. I used to do lots of black stuff, skulls and things like that but now I also love colour. In my work these days I usually have strong black shapes and colourful drawings mixed together.